


Rage

by Veridique



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nightmares, Psychological Trauma, Spoilers, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 14:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20321689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veridique/pseuds/Veridique
Summary: [spoilers for the 2nd campaign of Critical Role]It’s all the same. Yasha wakes. Someone is dead. She leaves.





	Rage

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Rage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16219874) by [SayNevermore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SayNevermore/pseuds/SayNevermore). 

> [Author's notes]  
I literally began the “fanfictions in French” section for this fandom. Incredible. I am so important.
> 
> For the spoilers, more precisely, the fic takes place between episodes 30 and 35 but follows the events of those episodes from afar. There are major spoilers for things that happened after episode 26, and more vague/minor spoilers for the things that Yasha said/did/lived through when she left in episode 9.
> 
> [Translator's notes]  
I fell in love with this fic within the first few minutes, and the English-speaking world deserves to have it, too.

At first, she walks, her fists and jaw clenched. She walks straight for the forest, and in her belly she can feel the shaking of the storm like she can feel the whirling rage in her skull. Her legs, her breath, the tortures inflicted on her body, everything disappears. Or rather, everything gets mixed up. She becomes a uniform block of pure pain, reduced to the simplest movements and thoughts. If she stops, she’ll collapse, so she walks and walks and walks and pain, rather than destruction, becomes her driving force.

But the fury always disappears, and then Yasha is nothing more than an empty shell. Her legs burn under the effort, the rain chills her bones, the basic needs of her body take back their rights. The storm dissipates above her, and she is alone, exhausted and starving, and no one can walk forever, and pain doesn’t fix anything.

It happened again. She woke, she had nothing, she left. Except this time, she had...the others were...they’re probably too far now. They didn’t follow her.

_I’ll find you when I’m ready,_ she had said. But when? When will she be ready? The storm didn’t stop her from losing, once again, her only family..

Her throat clenches around a cry that doesn’t make it out.

The thunder has stopped rumbling around her. It’s not he who called her, this time; it’s she who called him, like children call for help at night when their dreams fill their little hearts with fear. The caress of the tempest on her arms like the comforting embrace of a parent. But she is cold in the rain, and Kord is not her father. In the circus, when nightmares, anguish, or hunger kept them up at night, Molly and she would press against one another for body heat, like sleeping twins. Molly was always freezing. He joked that he wouldn’t make it through the winter without her.

The snow covers his grave.

She’s cried, already, and she cries again, and her head spins and the tears hurt. She doesn’t recognize the place where she’s stopped. She stands in the middle of a country that she’s never seen and which regards her with suspicion. She never learned to do like Molly, to ignore the suspicion, even delight in it. The carnival offered him a satisfactory facade, and then the group took over from there. She could melt into their patchwork mass; she became invisible. The group was a protection from the world, but she said _I’ll find you when I’m ready,_ and she isn’t ready, not at all, to retrace her steps, to walk once more past the branch planted in the earth, with the coat--the coat--his coat--and say to those who remain _no, really, I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want to be alone any longer. I made a mistake, take me back, wait, I didn’t know what I was doing, I wasn’t even awake…_no. She can’t do that. She needs, now, to find a destination.

She wakes. Someone is dead. She leaves. That’s what she does.

Kord will call again.

*

She dreams first of chains.

Alone under the perfectly clear sky, the night is cold, and in her rage, she brought nothing with her. She curls into her fur and keeps her sword against her chest, and if someone sees her, lying in the middle of the valley, if someone touches her, she’ll cut off their hand. No one passes by, but she wakes five times, six times, with a start, and each time the night is calm, each time she has to force herself to realize that no, her hands aren’t bound.

So be it, then. If she can’t sleep, she’ll walk. She watches the sun rise, the morning fog hang down. She walks until exhaustion finds her, stops for an hour, dreams again. Starts walking again until she can’t go further.

The days are divided into cold and silent segments. In the day, she walks; at night, she curls up in her fur. She leaves the road behind her and soon the forest covers the horizon. The landscape becomes more mountainous. The snow crunches under her steps, thicker and thicker. She has to dig to find stones, branches, to trap possible rodents, maybe a scavenger or two, while she sleeps. She doesn’t always get to eat. The forest seems more and more attractive. She could hunt, maybe. Hunting would at least keep her mind busy.

She dreams of Jester, her blue skin shining under the moon, shaking her head and charging in her direction, her horns suddenly pointed like javelins. In her dream, Jester cries “Let us go! Let us go!” and she cries “Fjord!” and she cries “Nott! Molly! Beau!” and she plants her pointed horns in Yasha’s chest. A blow for each name. Chains, again. Hands that hold her back. She wakes bathed in sweat, surprised to find her movements free. The night is black and frozen around her. She can’t feel her fingers anymore.

Somewhere up north, she could get to Rexxentrum. There’s at least one person she could go and see there. And the group wanted to visit there, too. Trent Ikithon seemed serious. He could surely protect her...a lone Xhorhasian in the capital.

But where is Rexxentrum? How long would she have to walk? A Xhorhasian in the Empire...how much time before she’s spotted, captured, interrogated? And if Trent Ikithon finds her presence too inconvenient?

She looks for black storm clouds, but Kord gives no indication.

In her dreams, Fjord summons his weapon and cuts her bonds--she doesn’t ask how he can make a dent in the chains, nor how he opened her cell. He creeps to her. “Leave me,” she murmurs, too weak to move. “Leave, both of you, leave, leave…”

Fjord looks at her. Gentleness and determination in his black eyes, always, always. “It’s you who left, Yasha.”

She wakes. The sky the color of dawn, snow on the ground, and a lump in her throat. She looks for the fire, the encampment around her. 

Her traps are empty. Her stomach growls.

*

“Give me a sign!” she cries to the thick bed of clouds. “What do you want of me?” Her voice is hoarse and raspy from disuse.

The sky is low and blank. No response.

Kord is not her father. He is not a guide. He is a reward for those who prove themselves worthy. She is so hungry, so hungry, and she is weak, weak, weak.

She didn’t know how to protect them, and now Molly is dead.

If the group can’t count on her, how can she claim the favors of a god? If the Stormlord turns from her, how can she claim to deserve her place in the group?

She’ll never reach Rexxentrum on foot. She’ll die in the forest, starved and injured, devoured by foxes. She’ll never rejoin the others. They must think she’s never coming back; it was only Molly who knew, without a doubt, that she’d find them again.

How can she survive like this? She wakes. Someone is dead.

She leaves, and life, chaotic, indifferent, continues. The rage never lasts, and it only leaves regrets. It’s impossible to run from something in your head.

She starts walking again.

*

She dreams of Beauregard, her dark skin and her black eyes, piercing, her eagle eyes which seek the thoughts of others, as her own are broadcasted on her face. No place for secrets. In her dream, Beau is standing facing her, but she’s also above, eagle wings unfurled in the wind. And Yasha is here, at the edge of the forest, but she is also the wind, the clouds which gather at the tops of the trees.

Her heart beats, like that of a child. Beau, stupid and ridiculous Beau. Dammit, how long had it been since she had felt desired? And she left, imbecile.

“I want you to stay,” says Beau, because it’s a dream and dreams make no sense.

She wakes with tears in her eyes, her throat painful. She is hungry, so hungry, and she’s cold. At night, when Beau took watch with her and pretended to shiver to snuggle up closer, she was always burning.

It hurts almost as much as thinking of Molly.

*

_Pity,_ she murmurs to the sky, which remains hopelessly blank. Silence. _I’m fed up with hurting._

*

In her dream, this time, Beau asks “What kind of a place is this?” and she is, again, at once animal and human.

Yasha prepares to respond, but she looks below her, below the black clouds, and there is nothing but water. A large expanse of water as far as the eye can see, and the eagle that follows her picks up speed all of a sudden, flies, flies, to the distant shadow of an earth.

“Wait for me!” she wants to cry, but she is the storm, she has no voice. A clap of thunder resounds and she falls, full speed, and drowns herself in the ocean.

She wakes, feeling as if she hears the natural hubbub of the waking group. The high-pitched and excited voice of Jester, her spirit so profoundly effervescent that it couldn’t belong to anyone else. It’s that, the beginning of the insanity: when she invents company to feel less alone.

Then, she realizes that the noise is that of rain. She’s soaked, her skin freezing, her teeth chattering. The rain got into her nose and mouth while she was sleeping, coating her tongue with the metallic taste of the storm.

From afar, lightning splits the sky. As the noise reaches her, she startles and her teeth _clack-clack-clack_ bite her tongue hard enough to draw blood.

The warmth, without delay, spreads through her veins. It burns, it covers her vision in red, and her mind goes to nothing. Oh, what a blessing. No more pain, no more doubts. Nothing but instinct.

In her heart, two gaping holes close up. For a second, wholeness. She is no longer a body, no longer a person, no longer anything--anything except the storm.

And then, the rage. Prickling in her fingers, contractions in her muscles, suddenly she is the tempest in a casing of flesh and she has to move, now, not to find cover, no. She has to move and that’s all. The night calls her, the storm pushes her. She pushes out a cry, to which the rumbling of thunder gives a lazy response.

In her delirium, her semi-sleep, it seemed like she grasped a name, a place. _Nicodranas._ She can hear again Jester’s accent, rolling the R. A destination.

No time to lose. In a moment, the rage ends, and there’s nothing left, again, except fatigue and regrets. A Xhorhasian lost in a country she doesn’t know. Nothing remains except Molly under the ice, and the group who continues their route without her. There is still hunger, cold, pain in her legs, and agony in her heart where solitude has hollowed out its place.

But for the moment, she walks.

Straight south. That’s where she came from.

Kord doesn’t wait.


End file.
